TOP FILMS

Richard D North discovers a woman who survived three shipwrecks, including the 'Titanic'

By Rosa Prince and Michael Greenwood

Lincoln's Inn

The boat may sink, but a new feminist role model has risen on the silver screen

THERE is, says John Agard, a poetic germ that infects certain areas of the BBC. "It's a healthy germ, though," he adds swiftly. John is the BBC's poet-in-residence; he has just started in his new post, and is settling in very happily, thank you, though things are "hectic and frenetic". One of his first appearances was a surprise slot on Newsnight two weeks ago. The poem was about numeracy, literacy and ministers getting their sums wrong. "I came on just after Kirsty Wark looked at the papers," he explains. "Then last week, on the panel, they invited Adrian Mitchell to give his views on the situation in Iraq - a poet, and a pacifist! It was very exciting. And they mentioned Siegfried Sassoon in that programme as well. In just two weeks Newsnight had found a real poetic chemistry."

LONDON TOP 10

TITANIC (12) is one of the most spectacular films ever made. It's also one of the most badly written. And yet, despite the abyss between James Cameron's meagre screenwriting talents and the apocalyptic grandeur of his direction, Titanic stays afloat. The dialogue may be unspeakable, but the film remains unsinkable.

Despite early hype predicting box-office disaster to match that of `Waterworld', `Titanic' is now the hot tip to clean up at the Oscars. Billy Zane, one of the film's stars, recalls life on-board

the big picture

James Horner has become the Mozart of movies, providing the scores for films from `Braveheart' to his latest, `Titanic'. Edward Seckerson charts the career of Hollywood's top scorer.

Director James Cameron has been haunted by death since he was a boy. His latest film, `Titanic', is about two-and-a-half hours in the life of people who know they face death. He tells Nick Hasted about his `metaphor for mortality'.

A good captain, states the lore of the sea, should always go down with his ship. In the case of the Titanic, though, it was not just her master but her designer, too, who remained at his post as the "unsinkable" liner submerged in the early hours of 15 April 1912. In the 1958 film of the disaster, A Night to Remember, the last we see of Michael Goodliffe's phlegmatic Mr Thomas Andrews is a shot of him standing alone in the ship's deserted smoking-room, staring fixedly at the picture above the mantelpiece. It's a poignant scene, all stiff upper lip and understated heroics. There's just one problem: it's the wrong painting.

But what was the tune the band struck up as the ship went down? Few who have seen Roy Ward Baker's 1958 film of the Titanic's doom, A Night to Remember, will forget the scene. As panic sweeps the decks, real men rush about shouting "Women and children first!" while wimps head lemming- like for the stern. Wallace Hartley, leader of the ship's band, puts down his fiddle. "It's the end, boys," he stoically observes. "We've done our duty. We can go now."